“Our goal was to get as rugged as possible with a non-specialized consumer wearable device, which is the Apple Watch,” says Dutta, professor of biomedical engineering in the Daniel J. Riccio Jr. College of Engineering and senior author of the research, published in IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering. She envisions researchers can use this app to monitor people with sleep disorders at home, without costly lab-based sleep studies.

Dutta designed this app specifically for her research into the connection between sleep disruptions and the development of Alzheimer’s disease.

Currently, the gold standard for sleep studies is through lab-based assessments, which are complex, expensive and require manual data analysis by a specialist. Even at-home assessments can be complicated, asking participants to sleep with electrodes on their heads.